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STUDIO ELECTRONICS Tonestar 8106, 8106 Filter & Slim O

Continuing its quest for world domination in the filter market, Studio Electronics brings us a new flavour of Tonestar, and a separate filter and oscillator, drawing inspiration from Junos and Jupiters. Dave Gale visits the new Gods of Eurorack…

If there’s one thing they like at Studio Electronics, it’s a filter. Goodness knows, in both its Boomstar and Modular range, you can buy just about any filter you want, from Moog- and ARP-based designs, to something akin to the CS-80. It’s also possible to buy designs based on the Roland TB-303, but now SE bring us a new Roland-style flavour, in the shape of the Tonestar/Filter 8106, which offers a full synth voice and the 8106 Filter on its own, in Eurorack form. As if that wasn’t enough, you can also now buy a small single oscillator to add fatness to your Tonestar. So, plenty of options to choose from – let’s dive in with the new Tonestar first, and take a look.

Buy Jupiter

The ‘8106’ moniker is a nod to Roland filter designs which, according to SE, are all pretty much the same. The differences lie in the way things are tuned, so what we have here is a Filter/ Tonestar design which is based firmly on the Jupiter-8/Juno-60 and 106. It’s very much a discrete, through-hole design, which has had a little bit of an upgrade in certain areas – most notably the operational amplifiers, which (as I was to discover) give an altogether more dynamic and lively sound and feel. There’s also been tweakage elsewhere; the Jupiter-8 filter wasn’t able to self-oscillate, and you’re going to want that, aren’t you? Good, because in tune with its Juno counterparts, it does indeed self-oscillate, but that’s just the beginning of the story.